"You can go up and down the personnel chart and find out who knows about fuel injectors for jet engines, " Aaron says.

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He watches engine temperatures carefully and has to make sure he doesn't push the fuel injectors so far that they are always open.

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To achieve these feats, Nektar's scientists performed hundreds of hours of computer simulations, tested more than a dozen different formulations of dried insulin and traveled around the world drawing inspiration from ancient Chinese seeds, plants in the Mexican desert and production techniques used in making instant coffee, powdered milk, aviation aerodynamics, truck fuel injectors and industrial vacuum pumps.

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And it must run on diesel five minutes before shutting down to purge the system of grease, which can clog fuel lines, filters and injectors.

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